On equality, class and classical political economy precepts

Chapter 2 is on the social policy developments in the nineteenth-century market economy discussed against the background set by the rise of an industrial working class and the ideals of the French Revolution. In the nineteenth-century social policy debate, attitudes toward working-class movements and the claims of equal citizenship rights dominated the preoccupation with poverty and subsistence of the previous centuries of capitalist development. Critical perspectives on liberal political economy precepts were voiced by writers and politicians in very different positions of the political spectrum who problematized the commodity treatment of labour. By drawing on Polanyi’s analysis of the countermovement, this chapter examines the advance of social legislation in English, French and German economic and political contexts in an approach which considers not only the conflicts of class but also the concerns about the protection of society against market domination. The chapter also includes a section on the rise of interest in voluntary action toward the end of the century.